Vamos a la Playa: Crete and Cyprus

              

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   Caitlin and I arrived in Chania, one of the major cities on the Greek island of Crete, late in the evening. Crete is a huge island and is the largest and one of the southernmost islands of Greece. The next morning we woke up to see how beautiful Crete really is. Chania is backed by the huge snowy peaks of the White Mountains (yes, it is possible to ski on Crete), and its coastline is lined with sandy beaches and beautifully translucent water with a vivid turquoise color caused by the weathering and dissolving of limestone over the past centuries. Soon after we started eating our breakfast, a Portuguese guy, Luis, approached us and asked if we’d like to join him and a Dutch guy, David, to go to a nearby beach that the hostel owner recommended. The hostel owner, Angelica, arranged for us to get a super cheap rental car because she is awesome and if you ever go to Chania you should stay at Chania Hostel. I was elected as the driver and got in the car to face my first challenge: sharing the road with crazy Greek drivers while driving a manual in steep terrain (which I had no prior experience with). After about an hour of driving which included 3 or 4 wrong turns and several stalls, we made it to Seitan Beach. This one takes the cake for the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen. I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

Possibly the most beautiful beach in the world

The crew. From left: Me, Caitlin, Luis, and David

Mandatory twins at the beach photo

We found a great ~25 foot cliff to jump from

And a great cliff for backflips

             That evening we went to dinner with a big group of people from our hostel and had our first taste of Cretan food. Greek food on the mainland was pretty good, but Cretan food just blows it away by comparison. Every bite was an explosion of flavor in my taste buds and the textures and smells and appearance all worked together to create an amazing sensory eating experience. This would soon become a common theme in our dinners. Each meal ended with the waiters bringing out a small desert and bottle of raki along with the check. Raki is Greece’s staple liquor, and is made from grapes and served after meals. Technically you’re supposed to sip on it after a meal, but anybody in their right mind just takes it as a shot because it’s not a very pleasant taste. Usually when we finished one bottle and were just about to get up to leave, the waiters would bring another bottle and convince us to take more shots. This happened 3 times per meal on average, ensuring that nobody left the restaurant sober.

                The next day was rainy and gray but we still had the car rented so Caitlin, Luis, and I recruited a Russian and a Ukrainian girl to fill up the car and go on an adventure. We drove to Imbros Gorge, a canyon somewhere south of Chania. It was a nice hike but the weather was a bit of a bummer and I didn’t get any photos since there was not much to see other than gray clouds. That adventure ended with some drinking games back at the hostel where Caitlin and I taught all the Europeans the classic American game “thumper”. The next morning the weather was still pretty bad so we decided to go to another part of the island in search of sun. We got on a bus to Plakias and stayed at one of the best hostels I’ve ever been to. The hostel had a big common area inside and outside, tons of hammocks, tons of information about nearby hikes, and just a great vibe. The owner was a German guy who cooked us eggs for breakfast every morning and he also had a fridge of beer which we could take at any time and write down our name to pay for them later on the honor system. I love places with that easygoing attitude and trust in everyone, and I find that the travelers attracted to those places are the best people to hang out with. 

Beautiful Plakias

              The next day in Plakias was a beautifully clear day but possibly the windiest weather that I’ve ever experienced. Caitlin, me, and several others walked down to a nice beach and hung out there for a while and then Mark, Timo, and I continued onward, scrambling up the rocks to find the best viewpoint. Mark is a really smart and inspiring California guy who I found out had worked with my Pomona geology professor in a lab at Princeton (random connections like this keep happening everywhere!). He found his passion in exploring the mountains and has been leading hiking tours and teaching skiing all over the world for the last few years. Timo is a really cool and open minded guy from Berlin who had visited Plakias before and liked it so much that he came back. They were both great guys to go explore with and we braved the wind to see more of the coastline. At one point it got so windy that we were leaning forward at what felt like a 45 degree angle and still being held up by the wind, and jumping straight up in the air sent us backwards about 15 feet. When looking out at the raging waves of the Libyan Sea and the clouds of water being sent a hundred feet into the air, it was easy to imagine how the ancient Greeks believed in the gods of water and wind. Poseidon definitely woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day. When we finally made it back through the hurricane-force winds to the shelter of the hostel, the night began to fall and we were treated to a mind-boggling view of the glorious starry blue streak across the night sky that is the Milky Way.

From left: Abdul, Mark, Timo, me, Beck, Caitlin, and a dude whose name I don't remember

The amazing mountains of Southern Crete

Invert your body and invert your mind

The amazing coastline of Southern Crete

              The next day was unfortunately our last day in our way-too-short trip to Crete, so Caitlin and I took a bus to Rethymno and then onward to the Heraklion airport. We walked around Rethymno for a couple hours and found a fortress on a hill which had a great view over the city and coastline. When we got to the airport there were tons of people crowding the entrance hall, including a large marching band and a huge group of monks. The next day was Orthodox Easter and a monk was bringing a holy candle from Jerusalem on a flight which was about to land. We watched as the monks came out into the arrivals hall and hundreds of people lit their own candles from the monk’s holy candle, all the while chanting prayers in Greek. Apparently they have a huge Easter celebration when the clock strikes midnight, with tons of fireworks an every church has a huge bonfire, but our flight left at 11pm so we missed it. We were able to see fireworks an bonfires in Cyprus from the air though as the plane descended for landing. 

The fortress in Rethymno

Greek Orthodox monks

The holy fire from Jerusalem

                 I left Crete with the feeling that I’ll definitely be back in the future; there’s just too much more to explore to resist going back again. Our flight was to Tel Aviv but had a 24 hour layover in Larnaca, Cyprus on the way. In Cyprus we had arranged to couchsurf with Rony, a kitesurfing teacher and generally awesome person. Rony picked us up from the airport and took us to a bakery where we got a bunch of Cypriot pastries and then went to his house to meet his 6 dogs. I soon found out that Cypriot food is as good as, or possibly even better than, Cretan food. In the morning Rony cooked us an amazing Easter brunch which included smoothies, pan-fried halloumi cheese, a bunch of vegetables, hummus, pita, Cypriot yogurt (similar to Greek yogurt) with dill and olive oil, a baklava-like desert, and probably a lot more that I’m forgetting right now.

After a delicious and incredibly filling brunch we set off to the beach that Rony kitesurfs at, near Limassol. We couldn’t kitesurf because it requires a couple hours of training on how to fly the kite before it’s even possible to get on a board, but Rony let me put on a harness and fly the kite for a bit so I could feel how incredibly powerful and difficult to control it is. There is a bar that you hold on to and pull left or right to lower the kite to each side, and you can pull down to increase the power. It was amazing how I would lift off the ground when I pulled down on the bar. Seeing Rony kitesurf and trying to control the kite myself made me really want to spend some time kitesurfing so I could get good at it. It looks like the ultimate adrenaline rush, like a combination of wakeboarding and flying. As I continue to travel I’ll definitely be on the lookout for a kitesurf shop that is willing to offer me free lessons and a place to sleep in exchange for a couple weeks of work. 

Learning how to fly the kite

About to launch

Cypriot sunset

After the beach we went into Limassol and I got the greatest thing ever: a gyro containing chicken, bacon, and halloumi, smothered in tahini. It was an amazing goodbye food from Cyprus, and soon after we were boarding the airplane headed to the homeland. I was about to start my first hostel job in central Tel Aviv, which would soon become one of my favorite cities in the world, tied for #1 with Vancouver and Ljubljana. More about that coming soon.

Albania and both Macedonias

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          After I finished my workaway job in Bulgaria, I got on a bus to meet up with my sister for her Spring break. Our first stop was Skopje, the capital of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Situated in the heart of the Balkan Mountains, Skopje is a beautiful city with a nice downtown area along a river and surrounded by snowy mountains. We couchsurfed there with Vlatko, an awesome host who knew a lot about everything and was happy to teach us about Macedonia. Macedonia is the name of the kingdom which Alexander the Great ruled a few thousand years ago, but since then the land has been ruled by Romans, Greeks, Turks, Slavs, and several others, and most recently gained independence and reinstated the ancient name "Macedonia" when Yugoslavia broke up. This causes a lot of tension between the Greeks and Macedonians, because Macedonia is also the name of a region in Greece and they're angry that another country gave itself that name. Greece thinks that Alexander the Great is Greek and Macedonians think he is Macedonian, but both are too stubborn to just look at a map and realize that in reality he was both because his kingdom overlapped parts of both current countries. 

The first day we walked around the city, which has a really nice modern downtown and a big old bazaar with restaurants and bars and a market. We ate at a restaurant and my meal of kebabs and fries cost 70 denars, which is about $1.15. Balkan kebabs are very different from German doner kebabs but equally delicious—they are little cylindrical meatballs filled with amazing spices and meat from unknown animals.

Alexander the Great, who might be Greek or might be Macedonian (or maybe he's just human)

downtown Skopje at night

The second day we hiked up Vodna, the mountain whose peak towers about 750m above downtown Skopje. It was a nice hike but the visibility from the top was pretty bad due to the clouds. We went back down to the city intent on finding a hot tub so we put on our nicest clothes and casually walked into a 5 star hotel in the center of the city. After successfully avoiding the reception desk and making sure to take note of some room numbers while wandering in circles around the hotel, we found the spa. When asked what room we were staying in I casually replied “212” and we were given towels, a bathrobe, and showed to the changing rooms. The spa contained a pool, hot tub, and 2 saunas which were all great after a day of hiking. Free accommodation (couchsurfing) and free 5-star spa service is not a bad way to travel on a budget.

the giant cross at the top of Vodna with the Macedonian flag

On Our third day in Macedonia our couchsurfing host drove us to Lake Matka, a beautiful lake with bright greenish water just outside of Skopje. We took a boat down the lake to a small cave and then hiked up a mountain to a little monastery overlooking the lake. The hike was steep but very rewarding as the views from the top were incredible. It’s amazing to have such big mountains just a 15 minute drive from the city.

rock formations inside the cave

Lake Matka

               

                After Matka I had a Macdeonian lunch of delicious meat stew and then we got on a bus towards Ohrid. Ohrid is a town on a big lake surrounded by mountains with Albania on one side and Macedonia on the other side. We met some Germans at the hostel because Germans are everywhere and went out to get some food with them. One guy had been a hiking guide in the Balkans for the last few years and I spent most of the evening talking to him about hiking and life in Albania. He had some crazy stories to tell, having just spent the winter with an Albanian family in a small town which was isolated the entire winter. The roads were snowed in and there was no way in or out of the town and there was no electricity or running water, so they had 5 months worth of food stockpiled and spent their days cutting wood for the fire and backcountry skiing. Apparently everyone has guns in Albania, and one day his neighbor ran outside and started shooting his gun in the air. When asked what he was doing that for, the neighbor exclaimed “my son was just born!” and the rest of the town erupted in celebratory gunfire. He also noted that most Albanians are very nice people and much less scary than their birth rituals may suggest, and he had hitchhiked all over Albania and Kosovo with no problems.

Lake Ohrid with a weird smudge on my camera screen

                The next day Caitlin, me, and a German girl rented bikes and rode along the lake to the next city, about 45 minutes away by bike. It was a really nice ride even though Macedonia is lacking in bike infrastructure and we had to ride on the highway for part of the journey. When we got to Struga we found a restaurant and I got the best meal ever: bacon wrapped grill cheese. That’s not to be mistaken for a bacon wrapped grilled cheese sandwich (although that also sounds incredible), but this was a  large block of hard cheese grilled to a nice crispy brown on the outside and melty on the inside, and wrapped in bacon. I can’t even begin to describe how amazing it was.

I didn't get a picture of the bacon wrapped cheese so here's the lake instead

Lake Ohrid between Ohrid and Struga

                After the bike ride we looked at the bus schedule to get to Thessaloniki, our next destination, and found out that the best way to get there was a bus from Pogradec, a city on the Albanian side of the lake. Since Albania has such a bad reputation of being sketchy as fuck, we wanted to get there in the daylight, so I decided that we should hitchhike instead of waiting for the bus which would take us there at night. Caitlin was a bit nervous about it since she had never hitchhiked before, but I was confident in the plan after having only the most positive experiences with hitchhiking in Eastern Europe and after talking to a guy the night before who had hitchhiked all throughout Albania. Our first two rides only took us about 5 minutes each before they turned off in the wrong direction. After the second ride we waited for about half an hour and only 3 or 4 cars drove by so we went inside a nearby hotel and asked them to call a taxi. The taxi was really expensive though so we said no thanks and went back outside to try to get a ride until the bus came later that evening. Within a minute of going back outside, a Turkish couple stopped for us and ushered us in. They didn’t speak a word of English but just pointed forward and we said yes. At every intersection they pointed to ask which way we were going and we kept pointing forward until we reached the border. They tried to take us further but got denied access to Albania because they didn’t have their passports on them. That’s when we realized they had just gone way out of their way for us simply because they were nice people. Literally the only words we had exchanged the entire ride were “USA? You like Michael Jordan?” to which we replied “he’s ok”, and these people were kind enough to drive us wherever we wanted to go without any expectation of payment.

Caitlin becoming a true traveler

                We then proceeded to walk across the border into Albania, and just on the other side we found a family sitting in their truck and watching the sunset. I asked if they were driving towards Pogradec and they offered us a ride. The woman was an English teacher and thus was easy to communicate with and the man spoke about 5 languages which didn’t include English but I talked to him in German. They taught us a few words in Albanian which I have since forgotten, and they told us that they run a restaurant on the beach. When we expressed interest in their restaurant they asked if we wanted to go there for some free drinks before we went to the hostel. Of course we said yes and soon we were sitting down in their little restaurant by the fireplace and sipping on homemade wine. Somehow the cup of wine ended up turning into a bottle of wine accompanied by a feast and the next thing we knew we were sitting in front of a table full of food: a giant roasted vegetable plate, a plate of Albania’s version of feta cheese, a plate of various types of juicy and delicious Balkan-style meat, and 3 trout which were freshly caught from the lake, all for less than $10 per person (we’re pretty sure they gave us a giant discount because normally the fish alone are $10 each).

our meal, which was about twice as big in total but we ate a lot before the photo was taken

 It is experiences like this which give me so much faith in humanity but make me wish that American culture was more trusting of unfamiliar people (I say unfamiliar people rather than strangers because “strangers” makes them seem strange, which they are not). My experience has shown that in countries which, until recently, have had nearly nothing (like all of the former iron curtain countries for example), people are used to having to rely on each other for survival and are more willing to trust unfamiliar people. Whereas in wealthy countries like the USA, we are able to obtain everything we need without interacting with unfamiliar people and years of propaganda has forced our culture into a “stranger danger” mentality where parents teach their children not to talk to anybody that they don’t already know. It’s crazy, and Americans’ paranoia of everyone else really hinders our ability to be a strong collective and cohesive society.

Sunset in Albania

          After dinner the guy who owned the restaurant told us he didn’t think the bus was running at that time of year so he organized a private taxi for us the next morning from one of his friends. He then took us to our hostel where we were welcomed with a large bottle of rakija. If you’ve ever been to Eastern Europe you surely have tried rakija, and if you’ve never heard of it, well, it’s the Slavic word for moonshine, and it’s everywhere (it was called something different in Albania since Albanian isn’t a Slavic language but I don’t remember the name so I’m just calling it rakija here). I’m not sure if I love it or hate it since it tastes absolutely horrible but the novelty of having Eastern European moonshine offered after every meal and as every welcome hasn’t quite worn off yet. They really need to learn how to use chasers though.

          Anyways, the next day we got up and our taxi dude was there to pick us up. For 30 euros each he drove us in his van from Pogradec to Thessaloniki, Greece. It was 10 euros more expensive than the bus would have been, which we weren’t stoked about, but it took 3.5 hours instead of 5.5 and that’s not a bad price for a private international taxi. We spent the next few days in Thessaloniki, staying with Caitlin’s friend Sami and walking around the city enjoying the view of snowy Mount Olympus across the bay, eating lots of pastries and feta, and we went to Meteora monasteries one day.

A Greek ambulance. Everything looks like it has math written on it.

Sunset over Thessaloniki

          Meteora was a really cool place; there are several monasteries perched on top of giant rock pillars. The landscape consists of huge cliffs and 100+ foot high rock pillars jutting out of the ground in finger-like formations. Monks with huge beards live there in solitude and do whatever it is that monks do. We went into one monastery and walked around the rocks and cliffs surrounding them. 

a blurry picture of Mount Olympus on the drive to Meteora

The monasteries at Meteora

Meteora

         That pretty much concludes our trip to Albania and the Macedonias, next up: beachy places (Crete, Cyprus, and Tel Aviv).

Workaway in Bulgaria

              

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       I arrived in Bulgaria’s capital city, Sofia, with absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into. I was about to begin my first workaway job on a small farm in a tiny Bulgarian village about an hour outside the city. For those who don’t know, workaway is a website where travelers can sign up to do work exchanges anywhere in the world—usually working 5-6 hours a day in exchange for free food and lodging. I had never done it before but I had heard good things about it from several other travelers, and without having any source of income I knew I would have to do something like this to continue travelling. Apart from raising ducks in high school I had never done any sort of farm work, and knowing how to grow my own food seemed like a good skill to learn. So I sent out several emails to workaway hosts in interesting places like Bulgaria and accepted the first one to reply, without really bothering to find out any more details about where I’d be, what I’d be doing, or who I’d be with. I figured that like everything else in this trip so far, it would work out and be a good time. And I was right.

                Before I started my workaway, I spent one night in Sofia. The hostel I stayed at was great and served dinner, breakfast, and a beer included in the 6 euro price for a night in a dorm. I didn’t even leave the hostel that night because it was so great; I just hung out in the common room and drank beer with some Australian dudes who were staying there. The next morning I did get a bit of a chance to explore the city though, and walked around for a few hours before getting a bus to Samokov, where I would meet my new workaway family.

The big and beautiful cathedral in Sofia

                Kevin and Tina picked me up from the bus stop in Samokov. They are an English couple who moved from Kent, England to the tiny village of Alino, Bulgaria, a few years ago in search of a new lifestyle. Getting to know them over the following two weeks was a lot of fun; they are super interesting people with a lot of great knowledge to share, and once I got used to their British humor they were downright hilarious. They went from driving a Ferrari around the fanciest parts of London to providing for themselves by raising animals, selling homegrown produce at farmers markets, and making just enough cash to get by—a lifestyle change that many people would cringe at, but one that gave them a lot of my respect. In their former life they had all the material wealth anyone could ask for, and though our society may view that as the symbol of success, they found themselves constantly stressed and never having the time to enjoy the things that they had earned enough money to buy. So, instead of continuing that live-to-work materialistic lifestyle, they got up and moved to Bulgaria, bought a house with a bit of land to grow their own crops and raise animals, and opted for the work-to-live lifestyle instead. I found their story really inspiring, and their plans to turn the barn into a small craft brewery were quite intriguing—that’s something I could visualize myself doing at some point in life.

                Now Kevin and Tina have goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, rabbits, dogs, and a cat on their little farm. They sell their produce at the Sofia farmer’s market when it’s in season and delicious homemade jam, eggs, and hummus all year round.  When I arrived at the farm I was greeted by 4 newborn baby goats that looked like adorable little awkwardly long-legged puppies. There was also a batch of eggs in the incubator just about to hatch as springtime was beginning. I watched as crack spread further and further across an egg until a little wing popped out with a chick’s tiny beak soon to follow, and I watched until the little ball of baby chicken, still covered in slimy egg goo, took its first steps and fell immediately on its face.

my favorite little goat

Within my first full day there I had witnessed the amazing miracle of birth but also the unfortunate reality that animals die. Out of the 5 or so chicks that hatched only 1 survived, out of the 4 baby goats only 3 survived, and another goat had stillborn babies a few days later. That’s life though, and if they had been in the wild it would have been a far lower success rate. As humans we instinctually feel really sad when a baby animal dies because humans only have at most a couple of babies throughout their lifetime so it’s a really big deal when one dies. Goats and chickens have far more babies throughout their lifetimes though, so if every baby goat survived to a reproductive age, our world would be overrun by goats and everything would be covered in goat shit. So, though sad, it is a necessary part of life. Since this is a travel blog and not an ecology lesson, you can look up r-selection and k-selection on Wikipedia if you want to feel better about the fact that baby animals die.

To add to the death toll on my first day, we also had to slaughter a pig that somebody had purchased for a big pig roast feast. This wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, because, though gross, I knew that this pig was raised organically with a lot more care and freedom than most pigs, and this is a necessary step in the acquisition of bacon. Most people don’t think about the little piggy that their bacon comes from when they put it on the stove, but I think it’s good to understand the whole food cycle. The pig was killed painlessly and bled out. We then burned the hair off and cleaned the skin and from there it was basically like dissecting things in biology class. We slit the abdominal cavity to remove the organs. The intestines, stomach, and lungs went to the dogs and we took the heart and liver, and later the brain, inside to eat. I hadn’t tried liver since I was scarred for life after eating the most disgusting chopped liver at my grandma’s house when I was about ten years old, and I had never tried heart before, and they were both amazing. The heart was like the most tender and juicy steak, bursting with flavor, and the fresh liver was equally delicious. It was the second time this year that I was absolutely amazed at how delicious organs are (haggis was the first). The brain wasn’t my favorite, but if butter makes you fat then eating brain should make you smarter, right?

the view from my bedroom window at sunset

Don't worry! This guy survived

Luckily that was the last of the animal deaths and for the rest of my stay I had a pleasant death-free (although shit-filled) farm experience. My job the next day was to clean the pig pen, which had been frozen all winter but was finally thawing. When I say “it” had been frozen, I mean all of the pigs’ shit from the entire winter had been frozen. And if you’ve ever had pigs, you’ll know that they shit quite a lot. After an hour or two of heavy shoveling and plugging my nose, I was ready for a shower. Though shitty (heh heh, get it?), it was a satisfying feeling to look at the pig pen and know that I had given these pigs a nice place to live (and something clean to shit all over). It’s kind of like taking care of your baby, if your baby were to be a pig.

For the next few days I helped out with less smelly tasks like painting some of the rooms in Kevin and Tina’s house. I like painting so that wasn’t bad work at all, and every day I was rewarded with delicious meals of chicken, duck, curry, and bone marrow soup, which, I gotta say, is soup-er. It was great to be served real home cooked meals every day after travelling on a budget without too much kitchen access and eating street food for so long. Then, on Saturday, I had the day off while Kevin and Tina went to the farmers market, so I went out to the main road with my ski goggles on and held out a thumb until some guys in a big van stopped and waved me in. It was about a 30 minute drive to Borovets ski resort and the guys I hitchhiked with were great company. They were 4 Bulgarian ski bums who lived in Sofia and came out to Borovets a few times a week, and they told me great stories of their ski mountaineering adventures which I understood less than half of due to their less-than-mediocre English.

               

something to add to my bucket list

I paid my $35 for a day pass and rental gear (best thing about skiing in Eastern Europe!) and got on the gondola. Borovets is a pretty big resort and the gondola spans it top to bottom, covering about 3000 feet of elevation. The conditions were perfect; it had been snowing all week but cleared up that day and it was sunny with no wind. It was also a work day in Bulgaria since they sometimes work on Saturdays after they took days off during the week for a holiday, which meant I didn’t have to wait in a single lift line all day. People seemed weirdly scared of going off the groomed runs even though the groomers got really bumpy by the end of the day and the off-piste powder stayed soft and smooth, so that combined with the general lack of people meant that I had the powder to myself.

powder still smooth at the end of the day

I spent most of the day looping the same run because it was just so perfect. When I got tired I would go up to the highest elevation possible and enjoy the view of paragliders floating around the surrounding Rila Mountains, the highest range in the Balkans. At the end of the day I stopped by one of the lodges on the mountain to have a $2 beer and headed out to the road to hitchhike back to the farm. It was pretty easy to find people willing to pick me up, and 3 rides later I made it home. I rode with a girl who was a student in Sofia, then a guy who was a veterinarian, and lastly with a woman and an old dude who I assume was her dad but they didn’t speak a word of English so I have no idea. Many people of the older generation in Bulgaria speak Russian as a second language, which really didn’t help me at all since the only word I know in Russian is “shit”. I made it back though, just in time for dinner.

not a bad spot to paraglide

For the next few days nothing super out of the ordinary happened. I turned 23 which was a pretty uneventful birthday, at some delicious TFC (Tina’s fried chicken), shoveled a whole lot of goat shit and hay from the barn into the compost pile, and prepared some of the garden plots for planting. On one of my last days, after turning over the soil and laying compost on the garden for several hours, we decided that I should experience the local spa. I went with Kevin to the bathhouse, which is an ancient building that looks like it has been slowly falling apart for quite some years, surrounded by other completely abandoned buildings. We paid 2 leva to get in (1 euro) and went into the changing room on the men’s side (really the stripping room, since you change into your birthday suit), which had several beds/chairs to lounge on and cabinets to put our clothes in. But it was freezing in there so we did not spend any time in the lounge chairs.

definitely deserving of a spa break after filling up this compost pile

We took off all of our clothes and walked into the warmth of the bath room (I mean the room with the bath, not the toilet room). It was nothing like a western spa and was a very Bulgarian experience. It was one large rectangular room, covered by tiles that were crumbling apart and had clearly never been renovated. To the left there was an old guy laying on a tile bench, dick prominently flopping to the side and pouring water on himself (sorry for that image in your head). There were some showers in front of us so first we rinsed off before getting in the hot tub. On one side of the room was a large hot tub, maybe 15 feet long by 10 feet wide. It was the perfect temperature and was filled with water that came directly from the thermal springs underground. It was really pleasant, apart from looking like it might fall apart any second.  We spent the next half hour or so going back and forth between the hot tub and the cold shower. It’s the cleanest I’ve felt in quite some time.

 If the place had a makeover it could be a modern spa—it has the potential, but the tiles are all falling apart, the lighting is terrible, and it really is just a dark musty rectangular room with a bath, showers, and some benches with fountains next to them. I kind of like it how it is though, it has its own charm. They also need to keep it like that to keep the prices down since many people don’t have showers in their homes and come to the bathhouse a couple times a week to bathe.

When we left, we went to the taps just outside the building where the thermal water is piped up and drank some of it. Bulgarians fill up several water bottles at a time with it and believe that it has healing properties. And it may well—people are pretty healthy for a developing country. The water tasted great, I’d be happy to drink that every day.

                 

since I didn't manage to get any photos of the spa, here are some baby goats instead of old man dicks

baaaaaaaah

duckies in the snow

That pretty much wraps up Bulgaria. As I write this I’m on a bus with my sister through the beautiful Balkan Mountains to Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia, so more updates to come soon!